Scranton indie rock artist Petal headlines Good Things Are Happening Fest on Aug. 12
From a press release:
Indie rock band Petal, the nom de plume of singer/songwriter Kiley Lotz, is set to return to their hometown of Scranton this Saturday, Aug. 12 to headline the second annual Good Things Are Happening Fest.
The Run for Cover Records artist independently released their first new song in five years, “You Really Love Me,” on May 5, followed soon after by a performance at No More Dysphoria Festival in Philadelphia to benefit a nonprofit organization that helps transgender and gender nonconforming individuals.
Recorded at The Metal Shop in Philly, the single was described by WXPN as “a dreamlike throwback pop jam in the vein of Fleetwood Mac and Carole King.”
“I wrote this song in 2020. We were all home and I was spending a lot of time on my phone, as we all were, and feeling really insecure about everything, in particular feeling aware of this desire to get affirmation on the Internet, to feel something, and I was like, ‘Wow, this is really sad considering everything that’s going on that my anxiety is manifesting in this really specific way that feels surface and sort of vapid,’ but I know everybody interfaces with at some point,” Lotz told the radio station during an on-air appearance.
“It’s a very human thing now to feel like if you’re not getting validation on the Internet that maybe something’s wrong with you or whatever, so I just decided to kind of write a song that poked fun at that feeling as a way to process it just to kind of make fun of myself a little bit. I am a piano player by trade, I guess you could say, I don’t know, so during COVID I kind of reconnected with my piano roots and so I kind of started playing this little lick and the rest happened after that.”
This is the first new music from Petal since their second full-length album, “Magic Gone,” was released in 2018 via Run for Cover, examining the things people can’t outrun, despite their best efforts, and how it all catches up in the end, no matter what they do to hide from it.
Recorded over the course of a month with producer Will Yip (Tigers Jaw, The Menzingers, Title Fight) at Studio 4 in Conshohocken, these 10 tracks are a bitingly honest look at adulthood, accountability, responsibility, and mental health and the difficulties that go along with each of them.
“I was a closeted queer person struggling with chronic mental health disorders,” Lotz said of the three-year period that inspired the album.
“There comes a moment where all the paranoia, anxiety, and pain become too much and you realize the structure you built to survive is no longer is going to serve you. I had to make some very big life changes to make sure I didn’t die. It was not easy taking that level control over my life after spending many years worrying about upsetting others and being the best and most successful person I could be.”
That’s not to say that the last few years have only been negative for Lotz – there were a lot of great moments, too. They moved from New York City to Philadelphia, changed their focus from acting and theatre to music, toured with Julien Baker, Slingshot Dakota, and Kevin Devine, and chose to come out and live openly as queer, which they look back on as one of the most beneficial decisions they’ve ever made.
“Coming out was the beginning of a long and continuing process of self actualization, of taking a hard look at myself and the problems I had and how I could fix them,” emphasized Lotz, who is nonbinary.
Still, the highs of their rapidly changing life weren’t able to outweigh the lows and, in early 2017, Lotz found themself hitting a breaking point. Their mental health was rapidly declining, so after a relapse of suicidality, they made the difficult decision to prioritize their health above all else and move back to Scranton to enter intensive treatment for their major depressive and panic disorders.
It was that duality – the valley between the positives and negatives of life that they’d experienced – that inspired “Magic Gone” and its two halves. Side A, titled “Tightrope Walker,” features songs Lotz wrote before entering treatment, while Side B, “Miracle Clinger,” is comprised of songs they wrote in recovery.
“I think those two parts of me are what kept me alive,” Lotz explained.
“I became so skilled at the act of getting through every day that I trusted that ability, but knew if I slipped I could face a bad end. Still, I couldn’t help but have faith in myself and people and God and that things could be better, even though I felt so lost and hopeless.”
The culmination of it all is an album that showcases Lotz’ prowess as both a vocalist and a songwriter, drawing equal influence from ’70s powerhouses like Queen and Nina Simone as it does modern vocalists like Solange, Margaret Glaspy, and Mitski. Yip distilled Lotz down to their purest form, lending an unprecedented rawness to the sound. Themes of duality even make their way into the album’s instrumentation, specifically in Lotz’ decision to include church organ on the album. Playing organ was a huge part of their life growing up and, to this day, the sound of it inspires both comfort and fear in them.
Track by track, the singer transforms their vulnerability from a curse into a tool with which to analyze both where they went wrong and where they went right in their struggle for survival. Lotz offers a lesson for everyone about having the courage to face demons and make the best choices for themselves.
“Really feeling what it’s like to be completely heart broken, instead of just pushing it down so deeply, allowed me to see the true strength in vulnerability, that acknowledging pain, struggle, loss, and heartbreak, is strong, that being out is strong, that being ill takes strength all its own,” Lotz left off.
“Inevitably, we all have to make decisions that will be hard, but if we don’t at least try, then we may never know what life could be like.”
These emotions will be on full display at Good Things Are Happening Fest at the Scranton Iron Furnaces (159 Cedar Ave., Scranton) as Petal shares the stage with New York City indie rockers Wild Pink, festival organizer James Barrett and his band, Clarks Summit pop singer/songwriter Alyssa Lazar, Wilkes-Barre soul funk sextet The Tribe, New Jersey indie band Little Hag, Scranton indie favorites Esta Coda, Scranton funk rock jam trio Channel 65, Kingston dark dream pop group Glass Mask, Wilkes-Barre indie jam quartet Brendan Brisk Band, and Lehigh Valley indie/alternative band We’re From Antarctica from noon through 10:30 p.m. Tickets, which are $25, are on sale now at goodthingsfestpa.com.
